[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 82: Devil in the Details (Patreon)

Silver 4 wasn’t a massive barrier broken, but Will would take it. He put both of his unused points into Soul, knowing that he was going to rely on Sen’s sight to make up for the lack of his own Perception, which was still a measly Silver 0.

After that, he checked his new skill.

Skill: [Wail of the Forgotten]

- Spell (sound).

- Cost: moderate mana.

- Cooldown: 1 minute.

Gold

Over 100 billion humans have lived on your planet. Of those, less than a billion remain alive and on its surface today. How many of the dead are remembered today? How many will be forgotten in a year? A decade? A millennium?

The forgotten are restless, and they are angry. They will not be ignored.

This skill releases a concentrated scream directed at an enemy or area. Skill propagation increases with sound propagation. You may choose to widen the area of effect of this skill in exchange for reduced efficacy. This scream deals psychic damage.

[Manifest Despair] (bronze) - By increasing the amount of mana you spend, you can distill the essence of the forgotten into a beam of energy that does not require sound to travel. This beam inflicts necrotic damage. Both attacks will stun enemies, overwhelming them with the voices of the forgotten. This stunning effect can be resisted.

[Lament of Agony] (silver) - This attack also inflicts stacking levels of [Wither] and [Weakness] upon those affected. These effects can be resisted. The difficulty level of resisting these afflictions lowers the further the target is from the center of the effect.

Condition: [Wither]

- Deals slow necrotic damage over time.

- Weakens necrotic resistances. If the target does not have a resistance to necrotic damage, they gain a weakness to necrotic damage.

Condition: [Weakness]

- Removes resistances to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing attacks. If the target does not have a resistance to physical attacks, they gain a weakness.

- Lowers ability to resist all effects.

[Dark Harvest] (gold) - The voice of your victims will become forgotten eventually. With this, you can bring that about faster. Upon killing or knocking unconscious any User through the usage of this skill, you learn the current positions of all members of their current primary party or guild.

“Holy hell, that’s a lot of text,” Will said, scanning through the text. “And it’s all evil. Wow.”

Even with the general darkness of the rest of his toolkit, this skill just felt mean-spirited. Will couldn’t fully explain the feeling, but there was an aura of foul energy around this one in a way that not even the corruption-bound skills did.

Maybe it was because he knew this one had the mark of a sponsor on it. This was the first tablet he’d gotten from someone with obvious ulterior motives, and the skill reflected that. Though it matched with his powerset well, it didn’t feel as much a part of him as the rest had. That would change in time, he knew. It would settle into his soul more, and if it didn’t, he would force it to.

That said, it was, admittedly, a great fit. He’d been missing direct attacks from his skillset, especially area of effect ones. Thunder Wraith’s Grasp was decent and scaled well the longer a fight went, but he’d been missing out on fast, multi-target damage that didn’t heavily rely on him landing shots with his loot, which wasn’t always going to work.

This skill did damage, dealt afflictions, and set up the rest of his skills. The only downside was… well.

Will decided to try using the skill at low power, using little enough mana to not to invoke the Manifest Despair part of it. He targeted a random corner of the room.

For an agonizing second, the suite filled with the agonizing screams of the damned, tortured souls who had been lost to time. Even though it was his own skill, the sheer nails-on-chalkboard noise of it all sent a chill up his spine.

“That’s not going to be doing me any favors,” Will muttered. “I guess if I decided to go for the whole grim reaper aesthetic, this would be nice, but that’s not really my thing.”

He was going to keep this hidden for the time being, he decided. Better not to reveal any new tricks up his sleeves when everyone else was certainly being fed information about the competition via their sigils and sponsors. Even testing it this one time might have been too much.

Will’s sigil skills, on the other hand, were a known quantity. These, he could train, though he would rather do it in an actual training area rather than risk blowing his room up.

The last of his sigil skills, Desperate Stand, had gone unused for quite some time now, but now that it was charged to full, Will considered making use of it.

Not now, he decided. He would only be able to use it once per rank, and though the boost it would grant would be significant, Will was not currently in a state to suffer the after-effects. When every minute mattered, he was not going to spend days recovering from the expenditure required to use this skill.

He found his way back Caiyeri and Hua, who had swapped off of directly sparring to repeatedly using one skill each to attack a crowd of training dummies.

Rather than announce his arrival, he let his hunger phantasm drift out from his body. There was much more of it now than there had been, empowered as it was by the Hunger himself, and it practically drowned the room in shadow.

His aura, too, was more oppressive now, though it had already been a weapon. The Hunger’s additions to his aura were helpful, but unnecessary. Still, he appreciated the power boost.

Not that Hua or Caiyeri would be able to feel it. Both of them were allies, and weren’t affected by the detrimental effects that his aura provided.

“Are you alright?” Hua asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I feel like you shouldn’t be the one asking that,” Will said.

“Because I’m younger than you? Everyone grew up pretty fast when the world ended, Will.”

“No, definitely not. You’re more mature than half the grown men I’ve dealt with. I just mean that it feels kinda like I’m supposed to be the one holding it together, especially with how important I’ve been to everything so far. Not to brag or anything.”

“We’ve seen you fight,” Caiyeri said. “Some of us closer up than others. Your assessment of your importance is accurate. What’s bothering you?”

“Is it just me, or is that actual concern I’m hearing?”

Caiyeri turned her face up. “If you were the one trying to manage an unruly child with the most dangerous skillset you’ve ever seen, would you not be worried?”

Will chuckled, a bit of the tension running through him bleeding away. “You’ve got good reason to be worried. You know Nynn?”

“The gold-ranker who’s been running around with you and the otherworlder,” Hua said, delivering a flying kick to a training dummy, knocking it to the ground. “The Thief of Stars showed me.”

“Great. That makes this easier. I’m sure you also remember the corruption cultists.”

“Of course,” Caiyeri replied, chucking a Manaburst at another dummy. Its chest crumpled inward with disturbing realism before it reformed. “I am thankful I didn’t have to fight too many.”

“Even easier. Let me try to make this quick.”

Will explained the information he’d gotten from Nynn and Ayla, though he left all mention of the latter out. There were a lot of eyes on him. There was no need for more people—especially gods—to know that Ayla was alive and free. For a certain value of free, at least.

Neither Caiyeri nor Hua seemed to take it that heavily, though Hua’s expression did change to a deeper frown.

“Fuck me,” Hua said. “I knew it was bad, but this is going to be a pretty shit fight, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I’m not sure if we’re going to get help from anyone who was in the tournament already. I imagine that if they’re going to summon around two thousand people, they’re going to have measures for it.”

“They certainly will,” Caiyeri said. “If it were us, the artifacts would either have an effect that dosed all incoming summons with as much corruption as possible or would be amplification pillars that increased our power to the point where not even ten thousand silver-rankers would be enough to fight us.”

Will and Hua both turned to look at her.

“What? Do you think the end goal of the abyss elves was to achieve hegemony through peaceful means?”

“I thought you were trying to adapt to corruption or some shit,” Will said. “Not use it like this.”

“The Abyss was never powerful enough to manage something of this scale,” Caiyeri said simply. “We were barely able to compete in the first trial of the champion, let alone alter it so heavily that it would corrupt our planet. I am no stranger to this kind of evil. Why do you think I was so accepting of you?”

“I dunno! Maybe I thought you were a decent person! Ever think of that?”

“When you met me, I was in chains and telling you how shit you were at fighting,” Caiyeri said drily. “If you thought I was a decent person, you may want to get your brain checked.”

“Hua was accepting of me too, and—“

“If the rest of your sentence is ‘she hasn’t seen that much evil,’ I’m legally allowed to sock you in the fuckin’ face,” Hua interjected.

Will stopped. “Damn. Alright. I should’ve guessed from the way neither of you seem to really give a shit.”

“I give plenty of shits,” Hua countered. “But if I let giving a shit affect my ability to function, then I’d be dead six ways from Sunday by now.”

“Just because we’re your allies doesn’t mean we have to react as childishly as you,” Caiyeri jabbed.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Will said, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “I’m going to talk to Blurr, the elemental, and maybe Lily about this, too. I think she’ll be accepting about it, but I’ve made a few too many enemies out of the rest of them for them to even consider listening to me.”

“They’re not particularly fond of me, either,” Caiyeri said. “Neriym Rain is a water elf. Her kind hates me and mine. You know my issues with Thalia and Caiyeri Zero.”

“Basically the same as mine,” Will agreed. “How about the other humans? Hua?”

“Lu Jie’s clan has no interest in collaborating with anyone internationally,” Hua said. “I can try talking to him, though. Single people are usually smarter than their organizations. Xie-ren Jie is his sister, I think, so maybe I’ll be able to get through to her. I can definitely get through to Osiris. We’re planning on working with his group after we get intercontinental travel going.”

“That’s some solid coverage,” Will said. “So we probably can’t get through to any of the elves. What humans are left? Alan Truman, Casey Justin, Nitika Kapoor. I can definitely get Nathan, but Nitika hates me.”

“Truman and Justin are Americans,” Hua said, wincing. “Full offense intended, mate, your lot is mostly built up of murderous lunatics and ignorant assholes.”

“None taken. Country doesn’t exist anymore, anyway.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that. Make it to one of the coasts and tell me that again.”

“Assuming the coasts are still intact by the time we’re done with this, sure.”

“I can maybe get through to both of them,” Hua said, “but Will, I think you’d have a better shot.  I’m not a politician. I’m barely a fighter.”

“Give yourself some credit. You’re top 16 out of over two thousand of literally the highest-tier people we have in the world today. That counts for a lot.”

Hua shrugged. “Haoyu would beat me in a straight 1v1 any day of the week, and he’s not here. You beat me pretty easily.”

“I can beat anyone,” Will said. “You’ve got a great matchup into nearly everyone except me. You’re strong, and I’m glad to count you as an ally. Don’t underestimate yourself. We need everyone operating at maximum potential here, and you’re going to play a part in that. Your stealth is probably the best in the world right now. Use that, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Hua said. She didn’t sound completely convinced, but she nodded. “Most of the people we want to talk to are still sleeping right now, aren’t they? We should train a touch more until they’re more accessible.”

“Perfect,” Caiyeri said. “Will, it’s been a while since we’ve sparred. Would you like to join me?”

“Oh boy. I was just thinking I didn’t have enough broken bones. Let’s run it.”

#

[Power] advanced to Silver 1!

[Resistance] advanced to Silver 2!

[Perception] advanced to Silver 1!

Will had to admit that he’d missed doing proper training instead of taking part in progressively more insane life-or-death battles. It was almost a soothing experience, just abandoning his skills to fight hand-to-hand.

It also made him realize how reliant he’d grown on Sen. They’d agreed to fight without usage of their magic beyond their aura senses, and Will had felt blind without a thousand eyes constantly breaking up the edges of his vision, feeding him information on his opponent from every angle. 

Caiyeri had beaten him into the ground a few times before he’d finally gotten back into the swing of things. Even without Sen, Will’s aura senses were extremely sharp. He’d grown adept at using them thanks to the Hunger repeatedly brutalizing his soul.

Speaking of gods, Crown hadn’t pulled him into a dream-space after the first incident. Will wondered if that was just because it hated him that much or because Will himself hadn’t requested it. He’d have to check sometime, but he wasn’t keen on entering it, knowing that the Crown had the capacity to deal actual permanent damage to him. Maybe once Will had enough layers of Blessed and Purified from Envoy of Mercy to tank some lethal soul damage, he’d give it a shot.

Even what he’d done up to this point was enough to refine his soul and aura far past the point that any of the other human Users could manage. Even the years of practice that every abyss elf went through wasn’t enough to outpace the amount of power and precision he could output now.

Of course, Caiyeri was still a monster in hand-to-hand, and even his near-perfect aura senses couldn’t completely best that. It was a far closer match than it had been the first time, and Will even managed to best her once or twice.

Hua was training with them too, so Will took the opportunity to spar against people with a different fighting style. While Caiyeri’s made use of their superhuman physiques to fight like a dancer, Hua was very much a traditional martial artist. She got in, dealt damage quickly, and scampered off to avoid or deflect the worst of the returns. It was a combination of pre-apocalypse martial arts training and techniques that had been integrated into her methodology after gaining access to the system, and it proved to be surprisingly effective.

The Aussie was very good at taking Will off-guard, and though she was shorter and lighter than he was, her punches still packed a lot of force behind them. That was another one of the tricks from the system—even an unassuming child could punch with ridiculous strength. Stats mattered more than raw muscle did now, and it was never safe to assume what someone was or wasn’t capable of.

Still, Hua was easier to adapt to than Caiyeri was, and Will’s aura senses trumped hers by a lot. He came out on top in three out of the four bouts they had.

“Christ almighty,” Hua gasped, rolling onto her back and chugging a potion down. “Who taught you?’

Will jabbed a thumb at Caiyeri. “Mostly by beating the shit out of me. A lot.”

“Sounds, ugh, right,” Hua said. “I will pay you five thousand gold to come to Australia and train our special forces. That’s a promise. I have access to our coffers.”

“Assuming Australia survives,” Will said.

“If Australia doesn’t survive, we’re probably all dead.”

“I’ll take that offer,” Caiyeri said. “Five thousand gold is a lot. This one might miss me, though.”

“What are you trying to imply there?” Hua asked, raising an eyebrow suggestively.

“Oh, fuck off,” Will said. “I’m going to go train up my skills for a while. Do some meditation, maybe. I’ll go find the others afterwards.”

#

As it turned out, it was not Will who was to be the one to make first contact. He was meditating in a section of the massive, luxurious atrium specifically zoned off for peace of mind and soul when a presence intruded into the edge of his aura.

He opened his eyes.

“If it isn’t the murderiest, hobo-iest murderhobo to ever walk the earth,” he said drily.

“Aww, you flatter me too much,” Lily Teneli said. “I wouldn’t say I even make top 10 right now! Congratulations on making it this far, by the way. I knew you had it in you.”

“Somehow, I’m both unsurprised and disappointed that you made it this far too,” Will said.

“I haven’t killed anyone in the 1v1s,” she announced brightly. “You get plenty of XP just for beating them.”

“Wait, really?” That was a little embarrassing, considering that Will had killed Fan Yang and been in the process of trying to kill Nymlera. “Didn’t think you had it in you.”

“Me neither, but here I am! Silver 4, just like you. How’s it going?”

“Fine. I see you got a sigil. And a sponsor, too. Good for you.”

“You’re observant. It’s been pretty great! Uthra’s a goddess after my own heart—well, the huntress part, I guess. I wouldn’t be so sure about being a maiden. My sponsor—“

“I know her,” Will said, recalling the Lady of Overwhelming Violence. Even their mannerisms were scarily similar, down to the cheery but immensely threatening smiles they sported. “She seems like a perfect fit for you. What are you here for? Are you trying something?”

“Not trying anything,” Lily said, hands behind her back. She leaned forward slightly. “Just doing the same thing you’ve been.”

Will got to his feet. “You saw more footage of me, I assume. Are you looking for allies?”

That made sense. Will had found that a surprising portion of humans were generally unscrupulous when it came to his evil presence, and of all of people he’d encountered, Lily ranked pretty high on the list of people who didn’t give a shit about how dark their allies were.

“Eh, I figure you won’t try to kill me. I’m not worried about the ally part. I just want to see how you’re doing. You were my teammate, weren’t you?”

“You didn’t visit Fortress.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes I do. I can sense auras pretty well. Two specific ones, really.”

“Oh.” A devious grin spread across Lily’s face. “You sensed that, then?”

“Well, actually, if you’re on… good terms… with Neriym, I have a favor to ask. It’ll help you survive a bit longer, too.”

“Yeah?”

Will got to explaining.

#

Alan Truman was Silver 2, possessed the Gunner class, and was a sigil-holder of Peace. He did not greet Will, instead just stepping into the same alcove as he was. Will was taking a rare moment to relax outside of his suite, half meditating and half reading the book he’d purchased from the system store.

“Hey there,” Will said. “Did you know that you can buy old books from the system? Turns out they don’t have anything past, like, 2006, but there’s an okay selection. All the good Star Wars novelizations are here.”

Alan took a long, hard look at him. He held out a hand, calling a massive shotgun half as tall as he was into it.

“You’re the corruption guy,” he said.

Will couldn’t quite place the accent. Boston? New York? He hadn’t been on the East Coast for too long, so he couldn’t tell. There was a twinge of southerner in there, for sure.

“Yeah,” Will confirmed, eyeing the other man and checking his aura. “What of it? If you’ve been in the tournament for long enough, it should be pretty obvious that I’m not the corruption guy, I’m a corruption guy.”

“Damn straight,” Alan said. “Listen, I’d love to work with you. Seen your shit. It’s scary stuff, but that’s what we need these days. The best tool we’ve got is fear.”

Will wasn’t sure if he agreed with that, but he decided not to press the point. “I’m hearing a but here.”

“I got a lady in my ear telling me not to,” he said sadly.

Will frowned. “Peace, or a sponsor?”

Nynn was also a Peace sigil-holder, wasn’t he? Though come to think of it, the former Dread Executor had never confirmed that specifically, only that he was affiliated with the goddess.

“Can’t say.”

Truman abruptly turned and left, as if he’d suddenly gotten instructions to do so.

The frown grew deeper, and with it, Will’s suspicions rose.

“What the hell was that about?”

#

“Yo!” Casey said, waving. “You’re Will?”

He was in the middle of doing a sprint around the training dummies despite being in full plate from the neck down and holding a shield taller than he was. His class was Armored Defender, and his aura was one of the most complex Will had seen from a human User. It was still tainted with monster cores, and his control was pretty weak, but there was something different to it.

It clicked as Will waved back. Casey had already undergone a class evolution. That would explain why he was still able to remain in the tournament when it was only the best of the best still competing.

“That’s me,” he confirmed. “And you’re Casey.”

“Yep! Straight out of LA. When the world went to shit, we went to an even shittier shit, but we’re still here and we’re holding the coast down!”

“You’re going to have to introduce me to that,” Will said. “Out in the Midwest, we’ve seen about fuck-all about the outside world.”

“Come down sometime,” Casey said, barreling over a training dummy. They were set to be at silver-rank resilience, but it still slammed into the wall behind with such force that it cracked in two. “We could always use more vampires. Not much sun, these days, and I hear it got a lot worse while we were stuck in here.”

“Vampire?” Will asked. “That one’s new.”

“Oh, come on,” Casey said. He leaned his shield against a wall. “Dark powers, blood-drain, ominous evil aura?”

“I don’t drain blood.”

“Sure you don’t. And JFK’s head just did that.”

With a genial smile, Casey extended a hand. Will closed the distance between them and shook it.

“So, how can I help you today?” Casey asked.

“I’m glad you asked,” Will said, “because oh man do I have a long explanation to give you.”

#

Not everyone was on board with teaming up together, but a large part of that lay in the logistics. As always, the devil was in the details, and part of that was because they didn’t actually know how they were going to deal with the corruption cultists. Most everyone agreed that if the cultists showed up again, they would prioritize them over each other, but they weren’t sure what form that was going to take.

Will was the only one who could actually actively surveil the rest of the tournament, and he was doing so slowly, moving Sen’s eyes as stealthily as possible to scout the area out. The areas that had been stained with corruption were incredibly toxic to Sen’s existence, and there was a lot more energy still in the area than there should have been, almost as if there were still active rituals there.

Over the course of the next two days, he fell into a routine. He trained with Caiyeri and Hua, traded notes with Blurr, who was by far the most willing outside his immediate circle to fight alongside him, and meditated. Sleep came easily when he wanted it, and that provided even more opportunity to increase his power through the process of having his soul tortured.

It was almost peaceful. Will and Hua chatted a bit about their upbringings. Both of them had at least one Chinese parent, though Will was half-Chinese while Hua’s entire family had immigrated from the mainland to Australia. She talked about how Haoyu had always been an academic weapon, but she’d become a bit of a delinquent growing up.

“At the end of the day,” she decided, “I guess both of us ended up using what we learned growing up. He’s an idealist, sort of, but I feel like my feet are more firmly planted on Earth than his.”

“We’re not on Earth right now.”

“That’s your takeaway from this?”

Eventually, though, that time had to come to an end.

Except it didn’t. Forty-eight hours came and passed… and continued to past. The timer remained stuck at zero hours until the next round for almost six hours until a system update came.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, [Executor’s Intervention] has been used to alter the settings of the trial.

The time until the next round has been extended to [14 days].

During this time, your current surroundings will not be usable. An ongoing reality break has damaged the tournament venue. All participants will be transported to an isolated location on Planet Sol-3 “Earth” for the duration of the wait. You will not be permitted to leave this location.

Transportation initiating in [1 minute].

Nynn, Will thought.

If nothing else, this would be proof to the rest of them that the threat he’d spoken about was real, and it was coming.

Will hadn’t foreseen this, though. In order to preserve his soul’s energy, he’d refrained from re-entering the Beyond, so he hadn’t gotten any updates from Nynn.

Everyone split up back to their suites to prepare themselves, activating skills and preparing their items in case they were teleported into a mess just like they’d been during a previous round, leaving Will alone in the atrium.

“Here we go,” Will said. He looked up. “To everyone looking at me right now, you better keep watching. You’re not going to want to miss when I win, and if I fail? You can rest assured I’ll die telling you about how you could have helped and chose not to.”

Planetary transportation initiated. Local coordinates [48.52 S, 123.23 E] selected.

Destination: [Point Nemo].